Okaloosa County BOCC — February 26, 2015 — II.f. FSBPA Briefing Handout

BEACHES, AMENDMENT 1, and PROJECT FUNDING • Please support the inclusion of the beach management program in the implementation of Amendment 1. • The program has been the recipient of doc stamp revenues of $30 million annually since 1998. • $30 million is no longer adequate to maintain Florida’s most vital natural resource. Far too many worthy projects go unfunded. Too many miles of beach are being left to erode, and as they do, so do their economic contributions to tourism, storm damage reduction, resource protection and Florida’s quality of life. • DEP’s transmitted lists of local government funding requests for FY 2015/16 include 52 beach and inlet projects and monitoring costs totaling $101 million in state dollars. If fully funded, these projects would leverage almost $225 million in federal and local matching funds. • (From the Legislature’s Office of Economic and Demographic Research Program Evaluation, dated 1/15/15) “Beaches are the most important feature of Florida’s brand and have the strongest effect on attracting tourists.” “Beach restoration is essentially a form of quality control for that product.” EDR concluded that a state investment of $44 million in the program resulted in an average increase in GDP of $2.4 billion per year. This increased the overall collection of state revenues by $237.9 million. • Healthy beaches result in higher coastal property values, which increase documentary stamp tax revenues, so more money is available to fund Amendment 1 programs. Simply put, properly managed beaches will increase the size of the pie for the benefit of all water and land interests. • The beach program is currently funded by the Legislature at $47.3 million. A $50 to $60 million annual funding range is a conservative yet effective target for Amendment 1 consideration, and a reasoned starting point for project funding in FY 2015/16. Prepared by: FLORIDA SHORE AND BEACH PRESERVATION ASSOCIATION “A League of Cities and Counties on Beach and Coastal Issues”